Author: Gretchen Brown

A Gathering of Ravens by Scott Oden: a review by Gretchen Brown

As the ways of the old gods fades to twilight and the religion of the White Christ sweeps Britain, we are brought into the dark cold world of A Gathering of Ravens, a beautiful compilation of both historical fiction and fantasy genres. Scott Oden’s writing is easily readable, yet hauntingly poetic and evocative in style of the Eddas or even the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf itself. The author gives us a theme with characters sharing a little of each side of the yawning chasm of morality with themselves and the readers. Ultimately, morality is defined for us as honor, to oneself and to those to whom one has sworn allegiance, a basic and ancient code integral to the Norse culture.

We follow a young Christian Anglo-Saxon monastic Etain who travels in the company of a Christian Dane, Njall. After the apparent death of Njall, she becomes the unwilling travel companion of the monstrous Grimnir, a creature who can best be described as kinsman to Grendel an orcneas, or orc. Grimnir is Corpse-maker and Life-quencher, the Bringer of Night, the Son of the Wolf and Brother of the Serpent. Like his namesake the Norse god Odin, Grimnir comes with many names, is complex, not always easily understandable and hardly predictable. Bent on cold revenge for an ancient slight, Grimnir is an unlikely protagonist, not at all likable, yet we are always rooting for him. His reasons for doing things are not always clear, perhaps not even to himself. He is a faithful follower of Odin, while spewing contempt on the humans, particularly any who follow the White Christ. Etain must walk in his world while remaining true to her own beliefs.  While doing so, it gives her an opportunity to feel compassion and loyalty for the prickly-natured Grimnir.

Their journey takes us from Anglo Saxon England and culminates in Ireland with a lineup of Irish kings and sorcerers, Norse warlords and Danish refugees who clash outside the walls of Norse-occupied Dubhlinn. They become separated, face many dangers, together and apart, yet curiously, Etain continues to be loyal to her captor, to see something in him others cannot.

Some readers more used to a modern writing style may find the Edda-like poetic passages that the author interspersed into the main body of the narrative, off-putting. I thoroughly enjoyed them for the authentic mood they conveyed. It may also be an easier read to those who more familiar with the historical period and the manner of speaking. He includes many italicized words perhaps not familiar to the average reader, though this is not meant to be a criticism as I felt he placed them in enough context, which the “uninitiated” as it were, could keep up. That said, this is not “fluff” fiction.

The only thing that confused me and took me out of the story was the strange time travel via the World Tree Yggdrasil.

Ultimately, A Gathering of Ravens will have you turning the pages, surprised by the twists and captivated by the moving quality of the author’s use of language. His characters are neither flat, nor one-dimensional, but will stay with you long after you have reached the end, hungering for more.

Click here to be taken to the details page on Amazon.com

Cleanliness and Hygiene Among the Norse

Ibrahim Al-Tartushi, a tenth-century Arab traveler and merchant visited the Norse town of Hedeby in 950AD. He wrote “there is also an artificial make-up for the eyes, when they use it beauty never fades, on the contrary it increases in men and women as well.” One might well question whether this liner might not have been used in the manner of a football player’s eye black to shield the eyes from the intense sun especially seeing that Hedeby was a coastal town and many of them spent time on the water. Ibrahim ibn Yacoub seems insistent on the idea that it was used for cosmetic purposes, leaving us with an image of tenth century Viking men à la Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. They are depicted using kohl in this way in History Channel’s Vikings.

Constantinople had a very cosmopolitan environment, with people of many nations passing through and living there. Among those more exotic to the native Byzantines were the Varangians, people of Scandinavian or Scandinavian-descended Russian heritage. They brought many trade goods, including amber, honey and furs. According to The Russian Primary Chronicle, the Rus invaded Constantinople in 907 and as part of the payoff agreement, the use of the public baths was agreed upon.

The Norse made extensive use of saunas. Among the Rus, their bathhouses were called banyas. An Old East Slavic illuminated manuscript, the Radzivill Chronicle mentions the banya in the in the story of Princess Olga’s revenge for the murder of her husband, Prince Igor, by the Drevlians in 945 AD. When an emissary from the Drevlians came to Olga with an offer of marriage, “… Olga commanded that a bath should be made ready for them and said, ‘Wash yourselves and come to me.’ The bath-house was heated and the unsuspecting Drevlians entered and began to wash themselves. [Olga’s] men closed the bath-house behind them and Olga gave orders to set it on fire from the doors, so that the Drevlians were all burned to death” Incidentally, Olga was the grandmother of the Prince Vladimir who was given Basil II’s sister Ann in marriage in exchange for six thousand Varangian troops and a promise of conversion to Christianity. While the Varangian inhabitants of Constantinople and indeed most of the common native people as well, were unlikely to make use of the extensive cosmetics that highborn women such as Theophana would use, cleanliness was nevertheless highly valued, weakening the popular image of the medieval Scandinavian as dirty and unwashed.

The Abbot of St. Albans write with no little chagrin of the Danes who settled in England that “thanks to their habit of combing their hair every day, of bathing every Saturday and regularly changing their clothes, were able to undermine the virtue of married women and even seduce the daughters of nobles to be their mistresses.” Apparently even Anglo-Saxon women were crazy about a sharp dressed (Danish) man.

In The Serpentine Key, Freydis washes her hair in water scented with lavender flowers and this is a scent that Sven always associates with her:

Freydis placed the basket she had been carrying on the table. It was filled with meadow rue. There was almost little enough room for them both in the small space and she pushed past him, her hair smelling of lavender. If he had not known better, he might have thought he had never left Rodnya. A feeling like longing overcame him, drowning his senses in memories, threatening to make him forget why he was here.

Then as now, cleanliness was appreciated and enjoyed and we see that those who came before us, were perhaps not as smelly as we may have supposed.

Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 794-1241 by John Haywood

Face Paint: The Story of Makeup by Lisa Elridge

Cleanliness and Hygiene Among the Byzantines

Despite the Byzantine Orthodoxy that sought to minimize the Classical emphasis on grooming and beauty, citizens of the Eastern Roman Empire enjoyed primping. Certainly, the wealthy and noble women of the empire were concerned with their looks and Christianity cast no pall on the baths nor the sale of cosmetics and perfumes. Indeed, law in Constantinople decreed that the perfumers must set up their shops near the Great Palace so that the Emperor and his family might not have their olfactory senses assaulted by the common smells of the streets.

Furthermore, sweet-smelling scents was not merely the province of the elite. Because of the belief that health was made of a unique balance of humors, a sort of aromatherapy was engaged in which humors could be balanced by the smells of certain aromatic oils. Byzantine gardens, therefore, had areas set aside for aromatic flowers from which could be distilled some of the more fragrant oils.

Mirrors, tweezers and similar hygiene equipment would have been commonplace in a not only a Byzantine home, but a Varangian one as well. Numerous excavations have revealed hygiene implements from Viking-era graves including ear spoons, tweezers and dental cleaning tools.

To a certain degree my character Theophana is based on Basil II’s niece , the Empress Zoe, who was obsessed with beauty, even into her old age. In The Well of Urd, Theophana’s habits are described:

No longer young, she was still vain. She spent enough on costly unguents and cosmetics. She had royal jelly and saffron imported from Egypt at great expense to her husband. She also insisted on bathing once a month in wine, a habit he greatly detested. He did not know if it was the cosmetics or the way she had with those unearthly eyes, but men still managed to find her attractive and enthralling.

Michael Psellos wrote that Zoe turned her chambers into cosmetics laboratory in which she created cosmetics and ointments to preserve her beauty well into old age. Also in common with the fictional Theophana, Zoe was known for her numerous infidelities. Eventually, her husband, Romanos was drowned in his bath by assassins. Both historians John Skylitzes and Michael Psellos agree that Zoe was complicit in his death. Byzantine women did not use as heavy cosmetics as their earlier Roman counterparts. This was a good thing. A common cosmetic of Western Rome was white lead, used to make skin appear fashionably pale. It is also very toxic. For eye liner and darkening eye brows and lashes, kohl was very popular. Kohl was a dark-colored powder made of crushed antimony,(Stibnite. Unfortunately it is lead-derived and toxic) burnt almonds, lead, oxidized copper, ochre, ash, malachite and chrysocolla. Stibnite is initially gray, but turns black when it oxidizes. It was mixed into a fat base and applied with a rounded stick.

High born Byzantine women would keep their cosmetics in little jars called pyxides. These could be of pottery, glass or ivory, sometimes sumptuously carved as this example shows.

590px-Byzantine_-_Circular_Pyxis_-_Walters_7164_-_View_D
Byzantine pyxis Walters Art Museum [Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

Resources:

Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium AD 527-1204 By Lynda Garland

Imperial Women in Byzantium 1025-1204: Power, Patronage and Ideology by Barbara Hill

 

Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire by Marcus Rautman

 

 

If a Coin Could Speak

I was given this coin as a thoughtful gift by a friend a few months ago.  The coin does not come from exactly the same era as The Serpentine Key, but it is very close. In fact, the emperor depicted on the front is Constantine VIII, younger brother to Basil II, who is the Emperor in The Serpentine Key. Constantine co-ruled only nominally with his older brother Basil II. While Basil decided to throw off the oppressive regime of their great uncle the eunuch Imperial Chamberlain, Basil Lekapenos and take a serious interest in the affairs of state, Constantine showed no such inclination. He and his wife the Empress Helene continued the party lifestyle. It was one that ill prepared Constantine for sole rulership when Basil died in 1025. With Constantine’s daughter, Zoe marrying Romanos III Aryros and producing no issue, it spelled the end of the Macedonian dynasty and all the work Basil II had gone to to ensure that the Byzantine Empire would remain financially stable.

This coin would not have been very valuable in its time. It is not a gold solidii. But it would have been much used. Perhaps it passed through the hands of soldiers, merchants and  Arab traders.  Did it buy a cup of wine? A loaf of bread? A night with a girl in a brothel? I can only imagine that if it could talk, what a lot of stories it could tell.

At the time of Basil II’s death, the Empire stretched in the north to nearly the entire circumference of the Black Sea (then the Euxine Sea) to Crete in the Mediterranean in the south. To the west it encompassed Croatia and the southern end of Italia; in the east it bordered Syria, still maintaining Antioch and bordering Armenia, Iberia and Mesopotamia. While not as vast as the earlier Western Roman Empire before the division, the empire Basil left was stable. Her borders were secure, her people well cared for, her finances in order. Then began a slow decline for the Empire, till the sack of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453.

This coin could have been carried to Baghdad by a Syrian pepper merchant like Ahmed al-Zayeeb.. Perhaps it was spent on a cup of wine by a Varangian Guardsman, like Sven. They were notorious drinkers and a nickname for them was the “Emperor’s wine skins”. Perhaps a coin much like this went for a length of blue wool, for a cloak for Ulfric as described in The Serpentine Key:

Freydis fingered some blue woolen cloth for sale at the cloth merchants. It would make a fine cloak for Ulfric. Winter would be soon closing in. While it was not as harsh as in the Northlands, he was in dire need of a new cloak. The fabric was fine. She ran her fingers over the coin in her hand, feeling the raised profiles of the two Emperors, wondering how much she could haggle the cloth merchant down.

From The Serpentine Key by G.S. Brown

If only my coin could tell its own story. In the meantime, I must be content to weave my own.

The Varangian Guard Part Two

It didn’t happen any too soon. Bardas Phokas, the chief of the rebels and a one time trusted general of Basils’ was closing in on the imperial city. Or rather, one of his next in command, Kalyokyros Delphinas, who took charge of storming Chrysopolis, a city across the Golden Horn from Constantinople. It took a quite a long time for negotiations to take place, but once they did, either in late 988 or early 999, numerous long ships could be seen on the horizon and with them six thousand Norsemen. They soundly defeated Delphinas’ men. Delphinas himself went on to meet a nasty death of impalement. The Varangians then went on to Abydos where they were again victorious, albeit helped out some by Bardas Phokas inexplicably keeling over on the battlefield. Stroke? Heart attack? Poison? We can’t be sure.
Of these six thousand men, Basil selected the best to be his personal guard. They were fierce fighters. Wherever Basil went, they went. Basil continued his campaign in Bulgaria, fighting on for around twenty more years before seeing victory. No doubt the Varangian Guard were there at the infamous Kleidion where who knows how many Bulgarians were blinded and sent home. In Syria, they are remembered for stripping the lead and copper from the Monastery of Constantine and setting fire to it.
They had the distinct honor of being able to go to the imperial vaults and being allowed to take away whatever they could carry when an emperor died. Their oath was to the emperor alone and not to the empire. They were also the best paid of the military. In fact, it was so hard to get into the Guard, yuu had to not only prove yourself, but pay the equivalent of three pounds of gold as an entry fee. Many guardsmen went home to Scandinavia, wealthy men. After England came under the control of William, Duke of Normandy, in 1066, many disgruntled and disenfranchised Englishmen left to become guardsman.
The result of the marriage of Anna to Vladimir? Eventually Russia. Her grand onion domes, Cyrillic alphabet, eastern orthodox religion and many customs, were all distinctively Byzantine. But her name Russia, is because of the Rus, the Norse traders who came down to what is now the Ukraine to do business.
Later, Harold Hadrada would make the Varangian Guard famous with his innovative battle tactics, before returning to Norway to be king. He died at Stamford Bridge in 1066, in a failed bid for the throne of Northumbria. before the Saxon king, also named Harold, marched down to Hastings to meet his own defeat at Hastings at he hands of the William, the bastard Duke of Normandy.
The Varangian Guard survived in some form or other until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. By this time they no longer had the same awe-inspiring reputation, nor were they a Scandinavian unit. However, the memory of them is still renowned, as one of the most fearsome foreign units in history.

The Varangian Guard Part One

In The Serpentine Key, Sven Thorvaldson serves as emissary to Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, from Basil II, Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, bringing in the Norsemen who would eventually become the Varangian Guard.

Varangian was a term used by the Byzantines to denote anyone from the area we now call the Ukraine, as well as Scandinavia.
In 986 Basil II was in a difficult situation. His nobles were rebelling against him, he had a shortage of military, he had just been catastrophically ambushed at Trajan’s Gate by the Bulgarians and he no one he could really trust. It was not for nothing that the Byzantines were known for political intrigue. In fact the name came to mean political intrigue in later centuries.
Basil had a sister who was yet unmarried and in 988 he came to a decision that was to change the course of history. He sent a proposition to Vladimir, prince of Kiev who was then making himself all too well at home in one of Basil’s Cities, Cherson in the Crimea. If Vladimir would convert to Christianity and send six thousand of his finest warriors, Vladimir could then have the coveted hand of his sister, the Porphyrogenita in marriage.

Ann’s title, the Porphyrogenita, meant literally “Purple Born: she had been born in the chambers made of porphyry, a kind of purple stone and that meant her place in the imperial family as was her brother’s a high status one. One simply did not go marrying one’s imperial sister off to a pagan barbarian war lord who already had eight wives and numerous concubines. There was an uproar in the city. It was the scandal of the century.
What was in this for Vladimir besides the hand of the most eligible bachelorette in all Christendom?

By marrying Anna, Vladimir could ally himself with a very powerful neighbor, one with whom the Rus had long been at odds with. Furthermore, Vladimir had already been religion shopping. He had rejected Judaism and Islam and western Christianity, but the the reports of the high-domed Hagia Sophia– now that he liked. Eastern Orthodox Christianity it would be for him.  The six thousand warriors, Vladimir had amassed to take down his brother Yaropolk were getting a tad bit restless. Many of these were mercenaries who had been sent by Vladimir’s kinsman, the king of Norway, to aid Vladimir during his tempestuous little civil war with his brother for control of the land left by their father Sviatoslav. It was said that they told Vladimir when he had no money to pay them as promised, “Show us then, the way to the King of the Greeks!” For before this time, it was not unheard of for Scandinavians to be mercenaries in Byzantine forces, for which the Byzantines paid very well.

So in this way, Vladimir got out of a potentially sticky situation, got the girl (though he had to send away all the extra ladies, of course) and got a new religion with which to bind his divided kingdom of Norse and Slavs together. Basil married off his sister and got some of the most feared fighting forces in the world at the time. One cannot but wonder if some of them were not the legendary Jomsvikings, but that is a subject for another time.

 

Sorcery and Magic Part Four

Magic in the Christian context I n Constantinople is slightly harder to define, though not by much. If you think of magic as a belief system whereupon the order of things can be influenced by human will alone, there is much in Christianity and especially Byzantine Orthodox Christianity with its icons and incense that fits the bill nicely. The use of icons began to be seen as a form of idolatry and in the eight century, iconoclasm saw the destruction of many of these images of art. A second iconoclasm occurred in the ninth century. The people loved their icons however and iconography was eventually restored. Items such as amulets were popular to protect a mother during pregnancy for example, or worn to ward off the “evil-eye”, though they were frowned upon by the Church hierarchy. It was suspected that the Empress Zoe was indulging in some sort of pagan ritual in her chambers, while pretending to distill sweet oils for perfumes and cosmetics.

As with any culture, when a religion such as Christianity is introduced, it begins with the aristocracy and only slowly filters down to the lower strata of society as folk wisdom and folk magic continue to be practiced long after a nation has been “converted”. This was evident in Anglo-Saxon England as witnessed by the endurance of the old gods in things such as place names, the days of the week and even our own planet. It certainly was evident in Kiev, for though Vladimir converted to Orthodox Christianity, and outlawed the old Slavonic and Norse gods in an attempt to unify his people through religion, he failed to eradicate the old ways completely and in fact they continued to remain vibrant for the Russian people as late as the fifteenth century.

Henry Maguire writes in Byzantine Magic:

Practices like exorcism, blessing, or even the major sacraments could be viewed and used on the popular level in precisely the same ways as the magical operations designed to manipulate the material conditions of human life while prayers and rituals dedicated to saints who would be used in specific circumstances could be thought to create similarly efficacious alterations in human relations t those of the magical practices described above.

Emperor Manuel I Comnenus utilized astrology for his own purposes in the twelfth century. The Byzantine historian Anna Comnene, daughter of the Emperor Alexios, commented at length in her Alexiad on the use of astrologers and prophesies. Now these (astrologers) observe the hour of the birth of the persons about whom they intend to prophesy, and fix the cardinal points and carefully note the disposition of all the stars, in short they do everything that the inventor of this science bequeathed to posterity and which those who trouble about such trifles understand. We, also, at one time dabbled a little in this science, not in order to cast horoscopes (God forbid!), but by gaining a more accurate idea of this vain study to be able to pass judgment upon its devotees. She takes care to distance herself, not wishing to impinge on her reputation or imply that she (God forbid!) recommends that anyone ought to visit an astrologer for personal reasons.

Resources: Byzantine Magic by Henry Maguire

Byzantium: Church, Society, and Civilization Seen Through Contemporary Eyes By Deno John Geanakoplos

History of the Byzantine Empire from DCCXVI to MLVII By George Finlay

 

Sorcery and Magic Part Three

Seiðr was associated with spinning and weaving as were the Norns themselves. This may have also been one of the reasons why it was considered unmanly for Norse men to practice, as fiber arts were the domain of women. As Thorsteinn noted when he happened upon Málfríðr, Sigga and Olga in the marsh near Kiev:

He observed the three, a little girl, a young woman and an old crone, and the spinning and the wool in various stages of work and his face creased into a half-frozen smile. “I do believe I have wandered down to the very roots of the Great Tree and found the three Norns at work, spinning the fates of the world.”

Freydis explains the concept to Theophana in The Serpentine Key:

Theophana frowned. “I do not understand these words that you use. Orlog and Urðr .” The witch placed her hand on the door. She stroked the sleek surface, letting her fingers linger as if on a lover, before she answered.

“Orlog and Urðr are fate of mortals and immortals alike. But they are not the same. Orlog is immovable. Urðr, you move and shape through your own actions, like a fly’s struggle on a web. You may influence your own path which is Urðr , but you may not change Orlog, which is primal, unchanging, never ceasing.”

Nornsweaving

Urðabrunnr (Urðr’s Well) is located at the root of the World Tree, Yggdrasil and Urðr, being one of the Norns, controls the destinies of all mankind. The Norns are three in number and in addition to Urðr (That Which Is) are her two sisters, Verðandi (That Which Is Becoming ) and Skuld (That Which Should Become) There was no concept of the future in Norse eschatology. The future is ever changeable, depending upon what Urðr deals you. The only thing you may not change is Ørlög or primeval law. It is Urðr or (Wyrd in the Anglo-Saxon) that the seiðkona seeks to influence. Ørlög and Urðr can be likened to weaving. Any Norse woman in charge of a farmstead or indeed any common farmwife with the borders of the Byzantine Empire would understand that you have warp threads, which remain unchangeable and that weft threads or Urðr are what we can change in our lives and what give the weaving its pattern and color. The Norns were thought to influence the destiny of a child at birth and this concept can be seen in such well-known stories as the story of Sleeping Beauty and the fairies who are invited to weave a positive destiny for the child. Here too, the fiber arts make their appearance in the form of a spindle, which certainly takes us back to the Indo-European concept of our destinies as a thread. The Valkyries too are depicted as “weird-sisters” in Njall’s Saga, weaving the fates of men, though they thread and weight their looms with gore:

“See! warp is stretchedValkyrie
For warriors’ fall,
Lo! weft in loom…

“This woof is woven
With entrails of men,
This warp is hardweighted
With heads of the slain,
Spears blood-besprinkled
For spindles we use,
Our loom ironbound,
And arrows our reels;
With swords for our shuttles
This war-woof we work;
So weave we, weird sisters,
Our warwinning woof.

Sorcery and Magic Part Two

The Saga of Erik the Red is probably the most comprehensive information today about Norse seeresses.

There was in the settlement the woman whose name was Thorbjorg. She was a prophetess (spae-queen), and was called Litilvolva (little sybil). She had had nine sisters, and they were all spae-queens, and she was the only one now living.

It was written in a time when Christianity had come to Iceland and the old gods were becoming only a memory. Thorbjorg is obviously a very well respected woman. Like many of her ilk, she travels from farmstead to farmstead and is very lavishly received. We are told in great detail what she wears and this is obviously very important as one of the items is a cat-skin cloak. The cat was the sacred animal of Freyja, the originator of seiðr. We are not told what the talismans were, but perhaps they were rune staves.seeress

Now, when she came in the evening, accompanied by the man who had been sent to meet her, she was dressed in such wise that she had a blue mantle over her, with strings for the neck, and it was inlaid with gems quite down to the skirt. On her neck she had glass beads. On her head she had a black hood of lambskin, lined with ermine. A staff she had in her hand, with a knob thereon; it was ornamented with brass, and inlaid with gems round about the knob. Around her she wore a girdle of soft hair, and therein was a large skin-bag, in which she kept the talismans needful to her in her wisdom. She wore hairy calf-skin shoes on her feet, with long and strong-looking thongs to them, and great knobs of latten at the ends. On her hands she had gloves of ermine-skin, and they were white and hairy within.

In Erik the Red’s Saga the writer describes in detail the lavish preparation for the arrival of the spae-queen, Thorbjorg:

It was a custom of Thorbjorg, in the winter time, to make a circuit, and people invited her to their houses, especially those who had any curiosity about the season, or desired to know their fate… He invited, therefore, the spae-queen to his house, and prepared for her a hearty welcome, as was the custom wherever a reception was accorded a woman of this kind. A high seat was prepared for her, and a cushion laid thereon in which were poultry-feathers.

During the evening the tables were set; and now I must tell you what food was made ready for the spae-queen. There was prepared for her porridge of kid’s milk, and hearts of all kinds of living creatures there found were cooked for her. She had a brazen spoon, and a knife with a handle of walrus-tusk, which was mounted with two rings of brass, and the point of it was broken off.

One thing that was very important were the women who were able to chant the “wyrd” songs or fate songs. “Wyrd” was an archaic term referring to fate. We see it in Shakespeare’s “weird sisters”, in his tragic play, Macbeth, the three witches take on the persona of the three Norns of Norse myth. Wyrd became corrupted as “weird” in modern English, to mean something strange and unknown, which when you think about it, is fitting as our fates are pretty strange and unknown to us.

And when the (next) day was far spent, the preparations were made for her which she required for the exercise of her enchantments. She begged them to bring to her those women who were acquainted with the lore needed for the exercise of the enchantments, and which is known by the name of Weird-songs, but no such women came forward. Then was search made throughout the homestead if any woman were so learned.

We see that in Erik the Red’s Saga, that the old ways and the old songs are already becoming lost as Christianity takes hold in Iceland. Gudrid may well be the last generation to know how to chant the spells necessary for spae-magic to take place.

Then answered Gudrid, “I am not skilled in deep learning, nor am I a wise-woman, although Halldis, my foster-mother, taught me, in Iceland, the lore which she called Weird-songs.”

“Then art thou wise in good season,” answered Thorbjorg; but Gudrid replied, “That lore and the ceremony are of such a kind, that I purpose to be of no assistance therein, because I am a Christian woman.”

Then answered Thorbjorg, “Thou mightest perchance afford thy help to the men in this company, and yet be none the worse woman than thou wast before…”

Thorkell thereupon urged Gudrid to consent, and she yielded to his wishes. The women formed a ring round about, and Thorbjorg ascended the scaffold and the seat prepared for her enchantments. Then sang Gudrid the weird-song in so beautiful and excellent a manner, that to no one there did it seem that he had ever before heard the song in voice so beautiful as now.

In The Serpentine Key, Freydis is a seiðkona. Seiðkona means literally “woman of seething”. Freydis walks the nine worlds, speaking to the spirits and sometimes bringing back messages from the gods. In my writing, I leave the experience up to the interpretation of the reader. Did she have a real transcendental experience? Did she become high from the henbane and hempr (old Germanic word for cannabis) seeds thrown on the fire?

She settled the distaff between her thighs as if to begin spinning. But instead of wool, the end of the staff instead carried upon it a carved, whorled head. Instead of spinning, Freydis settled herself on the high platform, the catskin cloak warm over her shoulders. The ends of her fingers tingled and something deep in the pit of her stomach stirred, like a restless animal just beginning to awaken. The beat of the drum thrummed within her. The animal inside was coiled now. Watchful. Waiting. She was ready.

In The Bone Goddess, Freydis’ granddaughter Sigga learns seiðr under the tutelage of the same volva as Freydis did. Málfríðr is by this time, very old. The real Málfríðr was the mother of Vladimir Prince of Kiev and the Russian Primary Chronicle records that she lived to be over a hundred years old and even after the introduction of Christianity, was brought out from her cave (where she was presumably exiled) and called upon to prophesy. Was old Málfríðr (Malusha in the Slavic) actually a seiðkona? We may never know. The Russian Primary Chronicle tells us that she was a bondwoman and it seems unlikely that as powerful and important a woman as a seiðkona would be in bondage.

Seeresses were sometimes viewed with something more like fear. It is important to remember that there was sometimes a differentiation between seiðr and Spa. The spakona was more often likely to do good with her magic; the seiðr seeress was sometimes looked on with suspicion, perhaps because her practice involved sexual elements, though this attitude may have come about more recently with the advent of Christianity. Sometimes they were looked upon as evil, faring forth in the form of a fylgia, most often an animal or bird, intent on doing harm. The Voluspa from the Poetic Edda tells of one such sorceress:

Heid, they named her, who sought their home

The wide-seeing witch, in magic wise;

Minds she bewitched that were moved by magic

To evil women, a joy she was.

Since anything we have about seiðr today is written from a Christian perspective, after the arrival of the religion to Scandinavia, we may never know.

Resources:

Seidr: The Door is Open: Working with Trance Prophesy, the High Seat and Norse Magic by Katie Gerard

Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neo-Shamanism in North European Paganism by Jenny Blain

Seed of Yggdrasil by Maria Kvilhaug See also the author’s excellent web site: http://freya.theladyofthelabyrinth.com/

Sorcery and Magic Part One

The Sagas and Eddas speak at length on magic and no one is so central to that role as the seiðkona or volva. Seidr is a shamanistic approach to magic that differs from galdr, which involved singing or chanting the runes. Despite that numerous references to these practitioners of magic, we know little of what actually went on and can only guess at some aspects.

In the Ynglinga Saga, Freyja is the one who brings the magic art to the Aesir:

Njord’s daughter Freya was priestess of the sacrifices,

and first taught the Asaland people the magic art,

as it was in use and fashion among the Vanaland people.

Odin learns magic from Freyja, though in the Lokasenna, Loki accuses him of learning it from the Sami people thus:

 

“They say that with spells in Samsey once

Like witches with charms didst thou work;

And in witch’s guise among men didst thou go;

Unmanly thy soul must seem.”

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Odin and Sleipnir

For a man to practice seiðr was considered especially shameful and unmanly. He was thenceforth known as ergi. It is likely though, given the shamanistic way seiðr was practiced, that is was brought learned from the Sami people.

Some hints as to the nature of the magic they used might come from accounts of later medieval witches who were supposed to have rubbed a strange ointment of herbs upon their broomsticks upon which they rode naked. Francis Bacon listed the ingredients of the witches ointment as “the fat of children digged out of their graves, of juices of smallage, wolfe-bane and cinque foil, mingled with the meal of fine wheat.” Other recipes listed nightshade and henbane among other poisonous plants with toxic alkaloids. Not surprisingly, nightshade is notorious for producing a sensation of flight. Henbane also produces a hallucinogenic reaction.

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Grave goods of a Norse seeress including the mysterious wand

When archaeologists unearthed a rich grave of a woman at Fyrkat, Denmark from the tenth century, they found among many other grave goods, a pouch containing the seeds of henbane and cannabis both with mind-altering properties. Even henbane petals rubbed against the skin have been reported to have caused an experience akin to floating or flying. How much more so when combined with nightshade and mandrake, plants with high levels of toxic alkaloids such as scopolamine, hyoscyamine, and atropine. Such plants were placed in a fatty substance by medieval witches and applied to a distaff or broomstick and ridden upon. These herbs can take very quick effect on the skin and more so against the mucous membranes of a woman’s vagina. This would explain the sexual element darkly hinted at by later Christian writers, but never properly alluded to. In any case, asmale practitioners of seiðr were looked on with scorn by their contemporaries, it is possible that seiðr required one to be sexually passive, or perhaps there were actions associated with the anointed distaff that disagreed strongly with medieval Scandinavian sensibilities of gender roles, including that of fiber arts as we shall explore in part three of this study.

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